by R. E. Butler
She and Sloan entered a transport and Sloan spoke their destination. As it swiftly moved them through the levels of the ship, Sloan said, “Kasimir is a big man with a bad attitude. His mate, Anca, is from the Ghrakin world. She has eyes like diamonds, and pointed ears. I think the only reason she wanted to come along on this journey is because she wanted to use Eden before he became mated.”
Ashleigh felt nauseous. As Sloan spoke about Kasimir and Anca, she realized how foolish she’d been. If she’d had an open mind with Eden from the beginning, she would have seen him for what he was. And she really did like being with him. And she was powerfully attracted to him. And more than that, she knew that she loved him. She’d tried to keep herself detached, but he was impossible not to love.
The door to Kasimir’s quarters opened after Sloan pressed a pad and requested entrance. Kasimir was huge. Tall and broad, he had a scar down one side of his face that looked like it still hurt even though it was clearly healed and old. Sneering at them from under a dark brow, his thin lips curled up slightly.
“Lovely Sloan, who is this beauty?”
“This is Eden’s bride, Kasimir. She wants to see him.”
“He’s not done with my wife.”
“Please.” Ashleigh looked up at him. “Let me see Eden.”
“If you’re really his bride, if you care so much, why have you been on board for eight dins and he’s still got blue hair? That makes him a brokah; I don’t care what the Bordelayz says.”
Ashleigh didn’t know how to answer that. “I needed time, and you took him from me. Let me see him, please.”
Kasimir seemed to be considering things and then finally he said, “What’s one more person enjoying the show anyway?”
Much to her dismay, the scene that waited for her in the large bedroom was much worse than her mind could have invented. Eden, hair matted to his head with sweat and with fresh whip marks across his back, was thrusting into the body of a woman lying on her back while she played with her small breasts and licked her lips. Couples and groups of men sat around the room on lounges, some watching intently while others laughed lightly and whispered.
She hadn’t meant to make a sound, but a small, sad gasp left her lips. Eden’s head shot up, and he froze, eyes locked to hers.
The woman under him shrieked, “Kas, he’s gone soft! Do something!”
The look of utter humiliation on Eden’s face made Ashleigh’s heart break even further. She barely heard Kasimir say, “Get the whip,” but the words registered when one of the men watching stood up and grabbed a lethal-looking whip from a hook on the wall. Ashleigh screamed, “No! Wait, wait!” She raced to Eden, to protect him.
Kasimir regarded her coolly. “You have no standing here, little Earth girl. You’re not his mate yet and until he finishes fucking my bride, he’s not going anywhere.”
The whip unraveled with a slithering sound, and her brain spun. She absolutely couldn’t watch him get beaten. Not when she’d been so foolish. “Wait, I can help him.”
“Help him?” Kasimir asked with an arched brow.
“Yes, I can help him get hard again so he can finish. Obviously I broke his concentration. You don’t need to whip him.”
Shrugging, he said, “Suit yourself.”
She gave a meaningful look at Sloan, who nodded but looked worried. She turned and climbed up the bed next to Eden, ignoring the naked woman sprawled out under him. He sat up, his limp cock sliding from her as she made an angry noise. Ashleigh cupped his sweaty face with her hands.
Whispering, she said, “I’m so sorry, Eden, I’m such a fool.”
He blinked tear-filled eyes. There was such pain and loss there. “I deserve this. It’s what I am. All I’m good for.”
Shocked, she gripped his face harder. “No, that’s not true!”
“If I can’t get my own soul mate to love me in a week’s time, then it’s just proof that this is all I can offer.”
“Oh, Eden, I do love you. I do. I swear. You’re too good for me; I’ve been so awful to you. Please, finish so we can go back to our room and make love so I can be yours forever.”
“Ashleigh?” His voice quivered as disbelief warred with hope in the depths of his chocolate-brown eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere until you’re done.” She slid her hand down his sweat-soaked stomach to the base of his cock, which was thick enough that her finger and thumb didn’t meet as she circled it with her hand. He tilted his head and dropped his mouth to hers with a moan, and she opened her mouth to his tongue and savored the sweet taste of him. As she stroked his cock, it grew quickly, and he pulled away from her mouth for a moment and flipped Anca over onto her knees and plunged into her. As he thrust hard and fast into her, he said with halting whispers, “I couldn’t look at her anymore.”
Ashleigh slipped slightly behind him, curling one arm around his side possessively and pressing kisses to his shoulder and arm. He clearly hit a good spot inside her because Anca shrieked in climax and he pulled out of her body, his cock still hard.
“Ooh,” Anca purred, rolling to her back and facing them, “that was wonderful.”
Ashleigh moved off the bed, grabbed the slacks that Sloan was holding out and helped Eden dress. When he stood up, his knees buckled slightly, and he leaned heavily on her. “I didn’t say you were done, brokah,” Kasimir said blandly.
Sloan stomped over to him and pushed her finger into his chest. “They’re mates, Kasimir. Even you can’t deny that. You’ve used him as your personal sex toy for far too long, and now he’s done with that life. If you try to keep him here when his bride is asking for him, I’ll have you brought up on charges.”
His lips curled into a snarl, but Sloan’s threat must have carried some weight, because he stepped aside and didn’t try to stop them.
Eden was quiet all the way back to their room, and Ashleigh didn’t know what to say to him. When Sloan left them at the door with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, Ashleigh took him straight back to the bathroom and called for the pool to fill. She helped him undress and get settled inside as the heated water rose quickly. Stripping, she joined him, settling on her knees between his legs. She reached for a thick sponge and gel wash, lathering the sponge and lifting his hand gently from the swirling, hot water.
“Are you okay, Eden? They whipped you, didn’t they?” She began to wash away the evidence of the sex from his body with gentle motions.
“Someone saw me in the market last night and told Kasimir that my hair was still blue. I was on my way back here when he met me and refused to allow me to come back. I couldn’t deny that nothing had happened between us. He said that my blue hair meant I was still a brokah and that he didn’t care how much I had paid to leave the Bordelayz, that I would always be one. I left the fruit outside the door and when I got to his chambers, he let me call Sloan and ask her to take care of you this morning. I thought I could talk my way out of it, ask for more time with you so I didn’t have to do that with Anca, but he wouldn’t agree to it. When I refused, they whipped me, and then they drugged me so I would be more compliant. The night is kind of a blur after that. I don’t know when he brought in the audience.”
She swiped the sponge across his shoulder and the front of his chest. “I’m so sorry for all of this. I was being stubborn. Even after I knew it wasn’t possible to go home, I still kept myself away from you. But you being gone last night made me take a hard look at myself. I should have asked you about yourself more and I should have been more open about myself. If I hadn’t been trying so hard to keep you at arm’s length, I would have asked about your hair, about our future. Kasimir took you from me, and I hate him for it, but I’m the one who set you up to be taken. I was selfish and awful. Can you forgive me?”
He pulled the edge of a towel over and blotted the tears that dotted her cheeks. “There’s nothing to forgive.” He put the towel back on the edge of the pool and fiddled with the embroidered hem. “How can you love me, Ashleigh? You hated the thought o
f whoring yourself to me, you were terrified of being sent to the Bordelayz. I’m a whore, the lowest in our society. I can’t give you the status you deserve.”
She hated his self-deprecation, but she understood it. “You’re not a whore anymore, not a brokah. I don’t care about status, Eden, all I care about is you. You’re mine, my husband and my soul mate. I still don’t entirely understand how I was chosen, but I know that we fit together, and I don’t want to go anywhere but with you.”
His brow arched. “You don’t want to go back to Earth?”
She returned to washing his skin, plunging the sponge under the water and moving it along one leg. “I did, but even if I could go home now, I wouldn’t. I would stay with you, Eden, because I love you.” She stroked up the inside of his thigh and watched his eyes close and his body relax. “When you’re rested up and healed, I want us to make love. Not just so your hair will change color and no one will ever force you like that again, but because I love you and I want to be your wife.”
He opened his eyes and smiled for a brief moment before closing his eyes again in exhaustion. When she had first heard he was having sex with another woman, her wounded heart had screamed no, not again! But Eden wasn’t willing. He was a victim, plain and simple. And while it killed her to know he’d been with that awful woman, she knew in her heart that it hadn’t been his choice. It had taken drugs and the bite of a whip to force him to comply. That meant something.
She washed his body tenderly, dismayed at how bruised and battered he was. After she rinsed his hair clean, she helped him from the pool and dried him carefully. She found a healing ointment in one of the bathroom cabinets for the whip marks on his back, and when she tried to help him toward the bed, he offered to sleep on the couch, which she soundly rejected. She straddled his thighs and palmed some of the ointment, rubbing it until it was warmed in her hands and applying it gently to the wounds.
He groaned as she worked her way down his back. “Did I press too hard?”
“No,” he rasped, “your touch is most welcome.”
“I don’t understand what happened last night, Eden,” she said, smoothing more of the ointment across one particularly deep whip mark. They crisscrossed over the old marks.
“What don’t you understand?” He rested his head on his hands and closed his eyes.
“Why wouldn’t Kasimir listen when you said no last night? You set yourself free. You should be seen as free, no matter what you used to do.”
He grimaced in thought and then said, “You know that my parents sold me?”
“Sloan told me,” she answered softly.
Eden’s eyes squeezed tightly shut and his body tensed. Ashleigh kept her hands on his back lightly, hoping to offer him some comfort. “That first time, my first time, when the governor raped me when I was with his wife, I told my parents I wouldn’t do anything like that again. They had plans to sell me nightly to the wealthy elite, who get their pleasures from dallying with whores, slumming it. My refusal was a roadblock for my parents, so they sold me to the Bordelayz for a large sum of money. But the owner didn’t just give them money for me freely, he gave me the money he had given them as a debt against myself. I was forced to work to pay off the debt of my own slavery while my parents spent the money on a house in a nicer area.”
Her heart cracked so sharply it took her breath away. She struggled to rein in the tears. “How could they do that to you?”
“I don’t know if they truly understood what they’d done in the beginning, but I know they only saw me as a meal ticket. Sloan fought to have my debt returned to our parents to force them to return the money and free me, but the owner of the Bordelayz had powerful friends, and I was too valuable to him to let go.
“I hated it so much. I hated myself. I hated my parents. I got hooked on drugs as a way to make myself forget what I was doing, so the money I was making toward my release was being eaten up by my addiction. If I wanted to leave the brothel I had to buy my freedom. Seventy thousand deenars. I might have been able to buy my freedom years ago if I hadn’t gotten tangled up in the drugs, but I didn’t care. Sloan came to see me frequently, and was even putting money toward my release, but I couldn’t stand to bring her down with me. I tried to take my own life, but I was saved by one of the other slaves. That’s when Sloan paid for me to go on a soul-walk. She said if I didn’t find my soul mate, then I could do what I wanted. But if there was a woman out there for me, then I was being disloyal to her by taking my own life. When I saw you in my vision, everything changed for me. I got free of the drugs, and I began to work harder than I ever had before, to save enough money to free myself.
“The things I did for that, Ashleigh; I don’t like that I debased myself for so long, but I had to get free. It took five years for the ship to be ready, but I worked like mad to make a home for us. Kasimir sees me as a brokah because I’ve been one for fifteen years. In his eyes, in the eyes of many, I will always be a brokah, no matter what color my hair is.” His eyes opened, and she leaned over so she could look into his eyes. “I should have told you everything. It wasn’t fair of me to leave you floundering about my past, my life.”
“I should have asked. You’ve suffered so much, but that’s done now. No one will ever take you against your will again, I swear.”
“I love you, Ash,” he whispered thickly.
“I love you, too, Eden.”
Chapter 6
Ashleigh moaned as she woke up, her skin tingling in awareness as fingers grazed over her bare stomach in a slow, languid pattern. Eden pressed open-mouthed kisses against her shoulder, his hair tickling her neck as he drew himself closer to her as she woke.
His hand stroked up her stomach to her breasts and he cupped one, lifting his head and looking into her eyes. The light in the room was dim, but bright enough for her to see the hunger in his eyes that made them darker brown, bordering on black.
“You are so beautiful.” His voice was husky and sent shivers down her spine.
She smiled, opening her mouth to return the compliment, when he pressed his mouth to hers, slipping his tongue past her parted lips. Her hands found his hair and played with the thick, short strands while their tongues glided together, tasting and touching. Her heart pounded in her chest and she pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around him. She ran her tongue along the edge of his teeth, loving the sweet taste of his mouth.
He moved down her body by slow degrees, kissing and tasting, nibbling and licking, until his lips slipped over the tip of her breast and suckled deeply. Her back arched off the bed, and her hands spasmed against his back. His tongue licked circles around her nipple as he continued to suck, his hair tickling her skin and making her nerve endings go haywire. Licking across the valley of her breasts, he nipped at the untended nipple, smiling against her flesh as she moaned, before sucking and licking it until it ached with need.
His tongue flicked across her stomach as he moved down, his breath washing over her skin as he slid, an inch at a time, toward her throbbing core. Slipping between her spread legs, he eased her thighs wider and rested on one elbow, dragging his fingers through the dark curls that covered her mound. “You are so soft here,” he murmured, a small smile on his lush mouth. “Our people are bare. I love your curls; they are so pretty.”
She’d never had anyone say she was pretty there. She blushed and smiled at him, sucking in a breath when he parted her lower lips with his thumbs and peered at her. His eyes met hers, and the look on his face was primal and full of need. “Pink and wet,” he flicked his tongue across her heated flesh, and her whole body jerked, “and so sweet.”
Licking up the wet slit, he delved his tongue inside her core, as she gripped the sheets and the pleasure began to coil deep inside her. He spread her apart with the fingers of one hand as his other hand slipped down, and he pushed a finger inside her.
“Oh...oh,” she moaned, her hips rising to take his finger deeper. He pulsed it into her, twisting it inside as he massaged her inner
walls. His tongue touched her clit, moving the sensitive bud, circling and stroking as he added a second finger. She felt the width of his fingers inside her, and wanted more. It felt good, so good, but it wasn’t enough.
“Eden,” she panted, feeling the edge of climax just within reach. He sucked her clit into his mouth and curved his fingers up, moving them in hard, fast motions as her body writhed under him. Her pulse raced, and her stomach clenched in waves.
“I, oh, Eden, oh....oh!” She cried out, her body jerking off the bed as pleasure filled her. Her body clenched around him as heat exploded within her, and her hips rose and fell as her limbs went limp.
With liquid grace, he slipped up her body, and she caught his hips with her legs as he rested in the cradle of her body. His hard cock lay trapped between them, hot and heavy. Framing her face with his hands, he kissed her tenderly, stealing her breath and making her fall in love with him a little bit more.
“You’ll be mine, sweetheart? Forever?” His voice was earnest, his eyes pleading.
“Yes, Eden,” she promised, brushing her fingers through the soft, shorter hair over his ears.
Shifting slightly, he lifted himself from her, easing his cock to the entrance of her body and pausing, meeting her eyes once more. With one hand, he gripped her thigh higher on his body and with the other, he linked their hands together and pushed inside.
They moaned together as his huge length pressed into her, stretching her and filling her like she’d never imagined possible. He held her gaze and squeezed her hand, easing back before thrusting hard, filling her completely.
“Oh...Eden,” she gasped, pleasure rioting through her body at the exquisite dance between pleasure and pain as his cock pressed deeply inside her.
“Sweetheart,” he groaned, sliding out slightly before pressing in again, “you feel so good.”
Sensually, slowly, he pulled from her body with languid strokes, filling her perfectly each time he surged forward and their bodies met. Her hips met his, her legs twined around his lean, muscular body. She gripped his hand tightly, and used her free hand to stroke the heated flesh of his side, from the curve of his hip to his strong shoulders. The muscles under her fingers tensed and relaxed as he thrust into her, and she gripped his shoulder and lifted her head to kiss him. Sweat slicked their bodies, and she felt him trembling slightly as if he were holding himself back, but losing his grip.